Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature by Tracy Fessenden

Abstract

Tracy Fessenden's Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2007) challenges mainstream narratives of American religious and literary history by arguing that Protestant definitions of religion and secularism have historically dominated discourse, marginalizing non-Protestant, non-Christian, and non-white perspectives. The book offers a critical re-examination of canonical texts, revealing how they reinforce Protestant neutrality in American identity. Reviewer The review praises Fessenden's nuanced approach and innovative readings of works by Cotton Mather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain. Employing critical discourse analysis, the book interrogates how language and literature construct religious and secular ideologies, aligning with postcolonial and cultural studies perspectives. By centering marginalized voices, Fessenden exposes exclusionary practices in American identity formation, complicating simplistic secularization-as-progress narratives. The review positions Culture and Redemption as essential for understanding the complexities of American religious history and its relevance to contemporary global debates.

(The abstract and keywords were prepared retrospectively for indexing purposes using AI-assisted tools and editorial review, based on the original article. They did not appear in the original publication.)